Gerald W. Lynch, who led the fight to preserve John Jay College of Criminal Justice when it was threatened with closing or merger because of New York City’s fiscal crisis, died on Wednesday at his home in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He was 76.
A professor emeritus at New York City’s Hunter College who studied biochemistry and taught laboratory science has died. Irwin Oreskes was 86.
Fitch was at the end of his life on the faculty of Laguardia College after stints as an organizer, journalist, and independent scholar often living on the fringes of what had become by late century a rather charmless bohemianism. He was, however, by no means obscure having authored what some regard as two classics of radical history, The Assassination of New York and Solidarity for Sale. A memorial brought out approximately 50 friends, admirers and associates to whom Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood delivered an affecting and eloquent remembranceof Fitch’s life and work. What came as a bit of a surprise to those unfamiliar with Fitch’s role in the left culture of New York City were the questions which followed: most were, to a greater or lesser degree, hostile, criticizing Fitch’s work as divisive and accusing him of functioning as de facto ally of capital.
Isaias Lerner, an internationally acclaimed specialist in Miguel de Cervantes who taught for more than four decades at the City University of New York, died of lung cancer in Manhattan on January 8.
Fitch was at the end of his life on the faculty of Laguardia College after stints as an organizer, journalist, and independent scholar often living on the fringes of what had become by late century a rather charmless bohemianism.
Elliott Carter, the American composer whose kaleidoscopic, rigorously organized works established him as one of the most important and enduring voices in contemporary music, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 103 and had continued to compose into his 11th decade, completing his last piece in August.
Barry Commoner, a founder of modern ecology and one of its most provocative thinkers and mobilizers in making environmentalism a people’s political cause, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 95 and lived in Brooklyn Heights.
Michael Wreszin, a biographer of radical 20th-century American intellectuals who were prominent antiwar activists, among them the social critic Dwight Macdonald, died on Aug. 12 in Manhattan. He was 85.
Joseph Cropsey was a leading political scientist at the University of Chicago for more than 40 years and an adherent of Leo Strauss, another of the Hyde Park institution’s famed political theorists.
Paula Hays Harper, one of the first art historians to bring a feminist perspective to the study of painting and sculpture, and the co-author of a major biography of Camille Pissarro, died on June 3 in Miami. She was 81.
